Wilt, 1962

by Gary M. Pomerantz

  After several games in the 1961–62 season York Larese rode with the Dipper on mostly empty trains back to New York. Larese, a rookie guard, had played for McGuire at Chapel Hill and had only signed with the Warriors in December after the expansion Packers waived him. He was a pure shooter who once set a school record by making twenty-one consecutive free throws in a game against Duke. (Larese shot his free throws quickly, as soon as the referee handed him the ball. Once, referee Mendy Rudolph didn’t have time to get out of the way, and Larese’s free throw skimmed off the top of his head. “Why did you do that?” Rudolph growled. Larese apologized and said, “That’s just the way I shoot.”) Some of his Philadelphia teammates, including Meschery, couldn’t help but notice how Larese “spoke like Frank and even walked like Frank,” and slicked back his hair like Frank McGuire, too—never mind that both hailed from Greenwich Village. Cynically, they called him “Frank’s boy.” On these train trips Larese discovered how keenly aware the Dipper was of being observed. Once Chamberlain carried a stack of books onto the train. Larese noticed the one on top and asked, “What the hell are you doing with a French book?” Chamberlain replied, “I’m taking French as a language.” Larese said, “You’re kiddin’ me?” He wasn’t. The Dipper told Larese that many people didn’t think he had an education, or any intelligence for that matter. Chamberlain knew many whites thought he couldn’t write or even talk. He genuinely wanted to learn how to speak French, but he suggested to Larese it was also important that people saw him with a French book in his hand.

  Of course, the Dipper’s interest in learning to speak French was well known to the team. During one plane flight, a teammate called out to Meschery for help on a crossword puzzle. Boisterous by nature, even in his fluent French, Meschery shouted the answer—the credo of the French Revolution—down the plane’s center aisle: “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.” Rodgers knew the Dipper was studying French and turned to him to ask, “What’s he sayin’, Dip?” The Dipper had no idea so he said, “He ain’t saying shit.”

  En route to Hershey, the team stopped amid a triad of Lancaster County towns known as Paradise, Bird-in-Hand, and Intercourse, at a Dutch country inn that was a favorite of Gotty’s; the inn’s owner was a Warriors season-ticket holder. In his big, cozy front room, he had laid out quite a spread: chicken in the pot, dumplings, corn fritters, Schnitz and Knepp (dried apple slices and ham cooked in a round bread dumpling), chow chow, and shoofly pie, the rich harvest of the Pennsylvania countryside. The game wouldn’t start in Hershey until 8:45 P.M. Some of the Warriors gorged themselves. As the first tangible proof that this night would be like no other, Gotty had earlier sent word that he would pick up the tab.

  CHAPTER 8

  Halftime

  HALFTIME BELONGED TO THE ZINK. “Please turn to your Wigwam program,” he said on the public address system. On the program’s cover was a smiling Indian dribbling a basketball and a picture of the Dipper. Gotty once called the Zink “the only p.a. announcer I’ve ever known who could take on a crowd of 18,000 and out-shout them,” to which the Zink replied, “It isn’t that I out-shout them. I work the crowd.” Now, in Hershey, the Zink worked the crowd with his usual halftime fan giveaway. “Our gift prizes tonight,” the Zink began, and he read from his list: a box of New Phillies Cheroots cigars, a souvenir rubber basketball autographed by the Warriors and, as ever, “those delightful kitchen favorites … Formost salamis.”

  Standing near half-court, microphone in hand, the Zink said, “Your lucky number is on page twenty-two. Tonight’s lucky number is 2638.”

  A fraternity boy from Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, reacted at once, Arnie Skaar shouting: “I won!” There, on page twenty-two of the thirty-five cent program in Skaar’s hand, was “No. 2638.” This number was even certified on the page in blue ink by the Zink’s handwritten signature. But a Theta Chi brother, George Dirkes, raised a brow and said, “Excuse me? That’s my program!” Skaar replied, “You gave it to me.” Dirkes said, “You asked to look at it.” Skaar marched down the aisle to the waiting Zink. Dirkes followed him. The Zink, real bubbly, said, “Looks like we’ve got two winners!” The Zink gave them a choice: the Formost salami or the Seamless brand rubber basketball autographed by the Warriors? A difficult decision. (Two more Theta Chi brothers watching from the seats craved the salami; they were hungry.) Skaar took the ball. Away from the microphone, the Zink told them, “Here’s the ball. You two guys figure it out.” The Zink offered Dirkes and Skaar seats behind the Warriors bench during the second half. Moving to those folding chairs, Dirkes told Skaar, “You can hold the ball … for now.”

  The locker rooms in the belly of the Hershey Sports Arena were dimly lit holding cells; there, for a quarter century, minor league hockey coaches had exploded in tirades. The furnishings in the Warriors locker room were spare: a solitary wooden bench lining each wall, metal hooks from which to hang a shirt or slacks, three oversized brown metal lockers, a sink, a toilet, two urinals, and a tiny shower room with three shower heads too low for anyone taller than five-foot-ten. Into this locker room space the Warriors’ Guy Rodgers carried a bubbling enthusiasm and a halftime message: “Let’s keep getting the ball to Dip. Let’s see how many he can get.” Frank McGuire liked that idea. Meanwhile, Ruklick had played briefly, at forward, and once banged hard against the lithe Cleveland Buckner. Ruklick thought, God damn, that guy’s in shape. The two players squared off, ready to fight, until the referees separated them. Ed Conlin, the veteran forward, congratulated Ruklick: “I’m glad you didn’t back down from that….” Conlin’s voice trailed off. Ruklick understood it was about race.

  Across the way, the Knicks knew that Chamberlain had scored forty-one points in the first half. It meant little to New York’s players. They were accustomed to this. Jerry West already had put up sixty-three points against them earlier in the season, and a year before Baylor had scored seventy-one against them. The Knicks always seemed the perfect foils for somebody’s big night. Besides, for Chamberlain, forty-one points at halftime was merely at the upper reaches of his own usual superior range.

  Every year when the Knicks broke training camp, Willie Naulls saw in his teammates a look of quiet resignation. It came from knowing their team didn’t have championship material. In Hershey, as with most games, the Knicks were competitive but fighting uphill. They were outmanned, as ever, and knew it.

  Sweetcakes. That’s what Bill Russell called Willie Naulls, in part, because he was uncommonly smooth and handsome. These qualities were impossible to miss. “Willie Naulls was a guy I wanted to be like,” the Pistons’ Ray Scott would say years later, “because I wanted to appear flawless on the court, too. Willie had a movie-star personality. He did what handsome guys do. [Off the court,] he stood around and looked handsome.”

  At the NBA all-star game party in a St. Louis nightclub in January, Naulls had accepted a challenge from Walt Bellamy and Oscar Robertson in a Twist contest. A New York sportswriter described Naulls on the dance floor as “suave, smooth, experienced and well under control,” an apt description for his game, too. Women noticed him. The Knicks’ guard Sam Stith saw Naulls’s small black book, in which he kept phone numbers, many of them, Stith surmised, the numbers of attractive women. Stith once asked, only half-kidding, “Willie, if you ever get traded, can I have your black book?” Stith estimated Naulls’s black book to be two inches thick, and years later he laughed and pretended to thumb through each page of that book, reading aloud the imaginary names: “‘Miss America, Miss America, Miss America.’”

  On the court, Naulls was a pure shooter, a six-foot-six forward with a breezy, unaffected sense. He wanted the ball, as scorers always do. He was having his best professional season, scoring twenty-five points a game, exceeded on the Knicks only by Guerin’s twenty-nine-point average. Naulls had been named captain of the Knicks, a remarkable achievement for an African-American athlete at the time—it was a first for the Knicks—though Guerin was the player who, by dint of personali
ty, captained the team on the floor. Naulls respected Guerin. They were two candles in the Knicks’ otherwise dark season. Guerin had proven his decency to him, inviting Naulls to his home, and, on another occasion, sharing his salary figures with him. That, Naulls believed, was the sign of a true teammate: a willingness to talk business.

  Long ago Naulls’s mother had told him, “Nobody is better than you,” and that belief had sustained him through a childhood marked by segregation, and it sustained him still. His family had moved from Texas during the war to Los Angeles where his mother worked as a domestic, his father as a pipe fitter in the Long Beach shipyards. Even now Naulls returned to Los Angeles each off-season and played summer games at the Dinker playground against other black stars such as Woody Sauldsberry, Andy Johnson, football’s Eugene “Big Daddy” Lipscomb, and many other lesser-known but hugely talented players. At the Dinker playground, Naulls believed, the talent far exceeded that in the NBA; the Dinker playground players were quicker and superior ball handlers.

  Naulls knew that the thirty-seven black players in the NBA now were only the tip of an iceberg that ran deep and wide into America’s urban core. That relatively few had broken into the NBA was, he felt certain, the fault of NBA team owners who “looked at what your parents gave you versus what God gave you.” Over the next decade, a new generation of black superstars, with their on-court innovations and luminous nicknames, would storm the league and revolutionize the game, the likes of Earl “the Pearl” Monroe with his spinning crossover dribble and Connie “the Hawk” Hawkins with his acrobatic swoops.

  Naulls understood he could’ve been stuck in St. Louis. As a rookie he had played only a few games for the St. Louis Hawks in 1956. After being refused service at a segregated diner during the team’s training camp in Galesburg, Illinois, he had nearly quit. A team physician talked him into staying. Naulls was thankful for the trade to the Knicks, thankful to leave a St. Louis team that one year later became the last all-white champion in NBA history.

  Yet six years into his Knicks’ career, the New York press still didn’t really know Willie Naulls or ask about him. Writers and broadcasters had picked up on his nickname from his pudgier days at UCLA, Willie the Whale. Once he was referred to as Willie the Black Whale. Naulls would say, “I was just ‘a big black guy.’ I prayed that I would never mirror the rage I felt for writers and fans. I was raised to withstand it. Most black athletes were.” On New York radio, he answered sportscaster Howard Cosell’s questions honestly only to hear Cosell misconstrue his answers and say, “There, you heard it here first: Willie Naulls is retiring.” Did I say that? I didn’t say that.

  Naulls found inner peace and contentment in Harlem. Unlike Dallas or Los Angeles, in Harlem he met many black professionals, third- and fourth-generation teachers and businessmen and physicians, urbane and sophisticated, thriving in a warm cocoon. He met Sidney Poitier in Harlem and Duke Ellington. He saw Roy Campanella’s liquor store and decided he’d never seen a place owned by a black man that was so big. Living in Montclair, New Jersey, Naulls met baseball’s Larry Doby and football’s Marion Motley and heard them talk about the old days in Cleveland and the way things were there for black people and how they’d gotten along. At Madison Square Garden, he’d met other black luminaries. Once, Ralph Bunche, United Nations diplomat, and schooled at UCLA, embraced Naulls before a game and thanked him for what you are doing for the race. Naulls met Jackie Robinson, who also had attended UCLA. At the Knicks bench, Naulls had told Robinson that he was a big Dodgers fan and loved to watch Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale pitch and more importantly that “I really, really respect you.”

  Now, as the halftime stat sheets made their way into the Knicks locker room in Hershey, Naulls noticed the Dipper already had converted fourteen of twenty-six shots, a full night’s work, and more, for any other NBA player. Naulls disregarded criticism of the Dipper’s game. Is Wilt selfish because he thinks he can make every shot? ’Course not. Shooters always think they are about to make ten in a row. Naulls also noticed that Chamberlain had made thirteen of fourteen free throws. Hmmm. That’s a new one.

  On the prowl, as ever, Kerry Ryman and his scamp buddies didn’t listen to the Zink’s halftime giveaway. Besides, they hadn’t bought a program, let alone tickets to the game. So the boys meandered over to the arena’s arcade. Ryman typically had his heart set on popcorn and pinball or perhaps the bowling machine where he slid a hard-rubber puck into mechanical pins. The boys emptied their pockets and pooled their coins. On some Saturdays, Ryman worked at the Community Center bowling alley, setting pins, earning a dime per game, maybe two dollars for a hard day’s work. As halftime neared an end, the boys moved near the spot where hockey players sharpened their skates, to steal a few glances down the back hallways, same as they did at Hershey Bears games, hoping for a close-up look at the players and referees. The boys carried their winter coats, not having bothered to leave them on their seats. Those really weren’t their seats anyway, and if they were no longer available when the third quarter began, not to worry. They’d scope out better ones, nearer the court, and claim them as their own. It was all part of their game.

  Help each other out on defense, Eddie Donovan emphasized in the Knickerbockers locker room during halftime. He was talking to his players about Wilt Chamberlain, how to surround him inside, down low. Naulls knew his primary role was to cover Tom Meschery, a strong rebounder and a fine jump shooter, while keeping an eye on Chamberlain. Naulls was to make certain Meschery didn’t get the ball into the big man. If he failed at that, Naulls knew at least not to get into Wilt’s turning motion. You do that and you take your life into your own hands. Naulls had made that mistake once long ago. The Dipper had nearly knocked him out cold, his elbow catching Naulls flush on the forehead. In Hershey, Sweetcakes wouldn’t make that same mistake again. He would play hard and shoot often, as he usually did. Then, much later, on the drive home, he would ask his friend the Dipper about his stock portfolio.

  CHAPTER 9

  Imhoff, Guerin, and the Knicks

  IT WAS PART OF THE CURIOUS ODYSSEY of Darrall Imhoff’s brief career with the New York Knicks that he played opposite Wilt Chamberlain on the hundred-point night. The usual late-night merrymaking, combined with the flu, had rendered the customary starter, Phil Jordon, unfit to play. Sweating and shivering, Jordon remained at the Hotel Penn Harris in nearby Harrisburg. Eddie Donovan gave Imhoff words to play by in Hershey: “You’re all I’ve got tonight. Try not to foul out.” Imhoff’s goal in Hershey was to go it alone against the Dipper, for as long as he could, being mindful not to commit too many fouls. This was a humble goal, but of course, there was much for Darrall Imhoff to be humble about. When he’d gone off to college Imhoff was six-foot-eight and really not even a basketball player. But he had possessed one great gift—he was tall and growing taller—and so he was made into a basketball player. Back in 1955, when the Dipper scored ninety points in a high school game, Imhoff was body surfing in southern California, wearing white duck pants (which were then in vogue) and feeling lucky to have even made the Alhambra High School varsity basketball team. As high school players, the Dipper and Darrall Imhoff were as different as west Philly and the West Coast: one would change basketball, the other could barely hold one.

  In Hershey, Imhoff’s NBA career was but seventeen months old and now he would be matched against the greatest scorer in league history. So intent was he on creating his own humble history in Hershey, Imhoff could hardly have known that this game, and his role in it, was a part of a larger sweeping history, a defining moment in the metamorphosis of the pro game. Together their portrait in Hershey would be rich in symbolism: Chamberlain and Imhoff stood alone on the trembling tectonic plates of their sport. They symbolized pro basketball’s accelerating generational shift writ large: the agile black athlete, swift and strong, moving freely against a white opponent who, though young, earnest, and determined, seemed outmoded and immovable, a handsome blond shrine to a bygone era when all of the player
s were white, dating back to George Mikan in his steel-rimmed glasses and to the even more remote days when the game was played inside a chicken wire cage (ergo, the term “cagers”) that protected surly players from unruly fans.

  So much for humility and being mindful of not committing too many fouls. Darrall Imhoff had committed three and so No. 18 had returned quickly to the bench in a state of exasperation. By season’s end, Imhoff would foul out of ten games (only five players in the entire league fouled out more frequently). Remarkably, he would record more fouls in his second NBA season than baskets.

  And to think, Imhoff had arrived in New York to the sound of trumpets, gussied up with glory. He had marched behind Rafer Johnson and the American flag into the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome and then marched out with a gold medal around his neck. The Knicks’ newest big man, Imhoff was a six-foot-ten golden boy with golden hair from the Golden State and now he had his gold medal, too. Defense and rebounding, that was Imhoff’s forte, and he was a pretty passer from the low post, too. An NCAA title already was his, earned at the University of California, Berkeley. The Knicks picked him third overall in the 1960 NBA draft: Oscar Robertson, Jerry West, Darrall Imhoff. Heady company. He got a two-year, no-cut contract, at $12,500 per. He faced big expectations.

  But a message awaited the rookie Imhoff in New York and so did the last-place Knicks. New York’s star guard Richie Guerin delivered that message at training camp. He did it privately, his words superheated. Born in the Bronx, raised in Queens, and schooled at Iona, Guerin personified New York City: all panache and puffed-up bravado, a great intimidator of smaller men and of bigger men with a smaller sense of self (their knees buckled under his glare). Guerin was tired of starting over, tired of finishing in last place, tired of new Knicks centers. He saw Imhoff’s jug ears and subtle swagger and the way he seemed to commit every act on the court with his left hand. Guerin’s message cut along a knife’s edge: “If you want the ball,” he told Imhoff, “then get it off the boards.”